Tokyo Friendfinder
If you happen to stop over at Kita Kyushu airport in the southwest of Japan this month, don’t be surprised if the porter offering to carry your bags is a four-foot green chap with an oddly metallic voice.
RoboPorter is currently being tested at the regional airport by Yaskawa Electric for a few hours each afternoon. As you’ll see from the photo gallery over at Japanese site Robot Watch, the machine looks something like a tiny flatbed truck and includes a screen that serves as its human face.
Operation is pretty simple – a would-be user simply approaches the robot and tells it orally where to take the bag he’s just handed over. There’s a touch-screen with a map of the facilities as an alternative. The machine can handle up to 50kg of luggage per trip and can also dispense information about the airport.
As the range of destinations is limited to the bus stops or taxi ranks, it’s clear this is a work in progress but at least RoboPorter isn’t going to hustle arriving tourists for tips or send them to its pal’s taxi for a ‘special’ fare into town.
(Crossposted to TechRadar)
Hire us to write for you, consult on Japan tech and more.Click here and let us know what you need and maybe follow us on Twitter for all sorts of Japan adventuring.
02:17 AM 
Mark Hiratsuka •
Permalink
R&D | Robots | Transportation 
Tagged with:
kita kyushu
yaskawa
Add a comment | More DWT | Get a cool job in Japan! | Follow us on Twitter
Share this story online:
Or try the world's biggest matchmaking site:
Japanese gadgets from Tokyo Zakka! — Perfect gifts for your nerdiest friends back home!
Next entry: Thinner TVs are helping to save the planet
Previous entry: LED TVs get boost by dropping organic element
